


alexa, play ribs by lorde

by Goldmonger



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Teen Titans - All Media Types, Titans (TV 2018)
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Domestic Bliss, Friendship, Gen, Sort Of, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, a truly staggering amount of dumbassery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-28 16:47:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20969798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goldmonger/pseuds/Goldmonger
Summary: Titan Tower is becoming a teenager's bedroom floor. Three superheroes can probably clean it up. Probably.





	alexa, play ribs by lorde

**Author's Note:**

> This is based pretty much entirely on that scene from a Derry Girls episode. If you haven't seen it, please watch it for context and actual belly laughs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bhfx2oVDV30

The scratching noise was coming from somewhere in the realm of the pantry, the door shuddering every few seconds as though battered by a brisk wind. Gar stood by the kitchen island and stared at it, willing his immobile feet to move.

Was it a bomb? A homeless guy? A _ghost?_

He took a cautious step forward, and the rattling continued, whatever was behind it probably scrabbling away at their Mountain Dew and jerky and Dick’s paleo oat powder, mindless of his presence. Gar had only been a resident of a hero’s sanctum for just over a month, but it seemed to him that something like this should have happened sooner. Some villainous assault or neat little mystery that would engage their new team and validate its existence – or prove it. All they seemed to do was train.

There was a light thud, and the volume of the squeaking increased. Gar allowed the barest hint of a groan escape, casting around for backup; the kitchen was empty but for dirty crockery, Rachel’s boots and half-empty soda bottles that Jason insisted on leaving on every available surface, ‘just in case’ he wanted to come back to them later. He clenched his fists and took another tentative step, then another, until he was mere inches from the pantry door. He put out a hand to hold it still, and felt the ensuing bumps of something small but determined knocking into it from somewhere near the floor. Swearing up a storm under his breath, he creaked open the door, and looked down.

His screams brought Dick, Rachel and Jason skidding into the kitchen at varied levels of panic. Dick saw him first, on top of the granite counter, bent at the waist to avoid hitting his head on the ceiling.

“Gar? What the hell is going on?”

Gar inhaled several short, painful bursts of air, then pointed shakily at the ground.

“Rat, rat, there’s a _rat_, it’s the size of my _head_, oh my god, where did it _go_ -,”

“Gar, come down,” implored Rachel, approaching the counter despite Gar’s frantic batting motions. “It must be gone now, it’s okay.”

“Can’t you turn into a rat?” said Jason, smirking. “Talk about pathological.”

Dick was ignoring them all, following the gravelly trail of crumbs and flour that was smeared in an arc from the pantry to the refrigerator. He slid a dusty rolling pin from one of the ornate wooden shelving units above his head, and crouched down a few feet from the skirting board that hemmed in their dishwasher and pull-out trash receptacle. He was perched on the balls of his feet, analysing the carpentry like a prospective buyer.

“Dick?” asked Gar, more to prove that his voice had returned to a normal pitch. Jason was sitting on the counter alongside him, watching Dick’s investigation and eating from an expired box of cereal. Rachel was tugging more insistently on his arm to get him to descend from his gargoyle-like pose next to the overhead cupboards.

“Hold on. I thought I saw -,”

There was an inhuman shriek as something large and brown propelled itself from under the fridge, snapping off a few more splinters from the hole it had made in the skirting board. There was a great deal of shouting then, as Jason jumped up beside Gar and Rachel hopped in place, as though this would encourage the rat to avoid her legs. Dick chased it from the kitchen back into the pantry, brandishing the rolling pin and stumbling a little in the spilled detritus of the rat’s foraging, barking at them to stay where they were. The three of them froze in place as a series of thumps and grunts emanated from the pantry, culminating in a defeated squeal. Dick emerged dusted with flour, looking like he’d aged twenty years. Or been pushed into a snowdrift.

“It’s under a bucket,” he told Rachel, whose hand was over her mouth. “Please go and get a blanket so we can release it back onto the street.”

Rachel rolled her eyes at the request but obeyed, cuffing Gar on the shin as she passed. The unspoken ‘you’re an idiot’ was accepted, acknowledged and agreed with by Gar instantly, and he climbed down off the counter, pulling a rather chastened Jason with him. He did check around his feet automatically, because, you know. Rat wives. Or rat babies. This meant that when he had finally calmed himself, he was looking straight up and directly into Dick’s piercing glare. He held up his hands in surrender.

“My bad, okay? I’m sorry for freaking out, but that thing was the size of a racoon.”

“You sure it wasn’t a relative?” said Jason, snickering.

“You weren’t so brave when it was coming at you either,” snapped Gar, and managed not to flinch when Jason made as though to smack him.

“_Enough_,” said Dick irritably, taking the blanket from Rachel, who had just appeared back in the room. She was smoothing her hair and holding her chin high, clearly appalled at herself for being frightened by something so pedestrian. Dick returned inside the pantry, and there was another mix of low cursing and scraping noises added to the squeals that were seriously starting to raise the hairs on the back of Gar’s neck. They all stepped smartly away from the jerking makeshift sack that Dick soon held aloft, and nobody volunteered to help as he headed for the elevator, the bundle hanging from his fist squeaking like a rusty hinge.

“We’re talking about this,” he called over his shoulder, and Gar felt his own drop as he surveyed the mess left behind, food with boot imprints as well as rodent paws all over the floor.

“You saw it,” he told Rachel miserably. “It was ready to bite, I could tell.”

Rachel sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. Gar winced, thinking of her moans in the night, of hovering outside her door with nails bitten almost to the quick in his anxiety, unseen torments from demons that now only Rachel was fighting – alone, and constantly. She was tired, he could tell, and not just from a lack of sleep.

“Sorry for the scare, though.”

She granted him a small smile, which abruptly soured as Jason poked his head between them, still crunching loudly on dry cereal. “I still don’t get why you couldn’t have just turned into Tony the Tiger, man. Gotten a little snack out of it.”

Gar saw red on his hands, felt something viscous and hot trickle from his lips.

“No,” he said sharply, and tugged the cereal box out of Jason’s hands. “And do you mind? Dick’s already pissed at us, and you want to make this place into more of a tip -,”

“Chill out, will you?” Jason leaned against the kitchen island, producing another cereal box from a cupboard behind him, the door left ajar. “This is still like, the Four Seasons compared to what I’m used to.”

“You mean Batman’s lair?”

“I meant the streets. But the ‘lair’ has rodents too you know.” Jason wiggled his fingers in Gar’s direction. “And those ones _fly_.”

“There’s no such thing as flying rats, just like there’s no such thing as shower rats. You are not going to trick me with your ‘street wisdom’ again -,”

“Okay, first of all, that was a real video of a rat taking a shower. And seriously? I was talking about actual _bats_, numbnuts -,”

“Do the two of you ever stop -,”

“Knock it off, all of you!”

Gar, Jason and Rachel’s voices petered out immediately, turning to where Dick was striding back into the kitchen, the now empty blanket balled in one hand. He tossed it to Jason, who caught it automatically then let it drop to the floor with a huff of disgust.

“Look at the state of this place.” He put his hands on his hips, and they stood there awkwardly. “That wasn’t rhetorical. _Look around_.”

Feeling a creeping sense that they were really and truly in for it this time, the three of them swivelled slowly and observed the kitchen, and the seating area, and the hallway.

Filthy dishes, cups, and silverware littered the sink and surrounding countertops, close to toppling in stacks that were crusted with the leftovers of a hundred meals. A brown stain on the ceiling was the evidence left behind from the one time Jason tried to make pancakes, while the strips of orange on the wall opposite them had proved to Gar that throwing spaghetti to see if it was finished cooking worked better before you added sauce. Rachel, after being taken shopping by Kory, had left her old Doc Martens and hoodies that smelled faintly of blood littered across the couch and next to doorways, generally ensuring that one or more of them were avoiding tripping themselves every time they walked into a different room. Jason had deposited everything from empty beer bottles to sweat-soaked under armour on tables or balanced on the backs of chairs. Across everything lay a thin layer of dust and grime tracked in from outside.

“I thought I lost that!” said Jason, retrieving a sock from a potted plant. “Damn, that’s lucky.”

His grin faded under Dick’s gaze, and he stuffed the sock in his pocket, mumbling something about it being hot the day he threw it.

“This place is a pigsty,” said Dick impassively, pointing to the sink, then the overflowing trash, then the mess left by the rat. “I mean rats? In this building? Unheard of until now. It’s a disgrace.”

“I mean, you do live here too,” said Jason, neatly dodging an old chicken nugget that Rachel had suddenly fashioned into a projectile. “Just saying.”

“I have a job across the country that I’m currently trying to transfer away from,” said Dick through gritted teeth, “in order to manage all of you. So I can’t always be here to pick up your dirty underwear, Jason. Did Batman not teach you how to clean up after yourself?”

“We had a guy for that,” said Jason, winking, and Gar was impressed that steam didn’t gush from Dick’s ears, considering his expression.

“That’s it. That’s _it_.” Dick vanished behind a corner and returned with an armful of bleach and disinfectant, a mop in the crook of one elbow. He tipped most of it towards Gar, who scrambled to catch every bottle and carton, then handed the aerosol cleaner to Rachel. He pushed the mop into Jason’s chest, who took it reluctantly.

“I’m going out. Doesn’t matter where. I’m going. And when I come back,” he gestured broadly to the residue of weeks of carnage around them, “this place had better be spotless. Better than spotless. I don’t want to know rats ever existed when I see this floor again, am I understood?”

“Yes, Mrs Poppins,” drawled Jason. Gar hurriedly leapt in front of him, saluting and nodding like the most agreeable, protocol-defying soldier. “We’ve got it. Spick and span. No problemo.”

Dick gave them one last round of his signature glare, then donned his jacket and made his way towards the elevator, pointing at the closet next to the bathroom down the hall.

“Materials for your mission are in there. I’ll be back at sundown.”

The elevator doors slid shut, and the blue blinking light on the panel beside it stilled. The three of them watched the closed doors for a moment more, letting the whiplash settle.

Jason whacked Gar with the mop, hitting a part of his ribcage that he suspected Jason knew was a pressure point. He rubbed it, bowing slightly from being winded, while Jason rounded on him.

“Why’d you have to piss off that rat, man? Now we’re all on the hook for this bullshit.”

“Dick’s right,” said Rachel, setting down the various sprays and cleaners on the countertop, lining them up like a merchant about to hawk her wares. “This place is gross. I mean, not my room. But it’s gross out here.”

Gar opened his mouth to argue, and had to jerk back as a slight buzzing alerted him to the fact that a fly was circling somewhere in the vicinity of his lower face. The three of them watched as the fat bluebottle zoomed around them for a few seconds, then landed on the chicken nugget Rachel had thrown. Beside it was an ancient, crumpled piece of pancake, swarmed with what appeared to be many generations of ants.

“I mean,” said Jason. “I’m not happy about it either. But that shit is nasty.” He jabbed his nose with his finger. “Not it!”

“Not what?” said Gar, bewildered, but Rachel had already followed suit, her darkly manicured finger placed primly on the tip of her nose. “What? I don’t want to be it,” she said to Gar, shrugging.

“You get to do the toilets, bud,” said Jason cheerfully, clapping Gar on the back. Gar shook his head vehemently, backing up.

“You are ‘it’,” explained Jason, flipping the mop so it was resting on his shoulder, like one of Dick’s staffs. “That means that you have to do the shit, no pun intended, task. Them’s the rules, bro.”

“Rachel. Rachel please -,”

“It has to be done, Gar,” said Rachel grimly, grabbing a carton of bleach and pressing it into his arms. “And the he’s right. You are ‘it’.”

Gar held the bleach, waiting as Rachel went to collect sponges and washcloths from the closet with startling alacrity.

“Best to do it sooner rather than later,” she said, rubbing his back. “Now hurry up. We only have a few hours and that bathroom is gnarly.”

Jason snorted with laughter as Gar stoically accepted his cleaning supplies. “What are you two geniuses going to do then, huh? Let me guess, nothing.”

“I’m going to clean the floor, and the walls, and the windows. And the doors,” said Jason. He bit his lip. “Assuming that they need cleaning. I mean, we do throw a lot of shit around in here.”

“’We’, meaning _you_.”

“I’ll take out the trash and do the dishes,” said Rachel staunchly, swallowing as thought the very idea was nauseating. “Jason, take out the vacuum before you do all of that.”

“Yes ma’am,” said Jason, who looked bored already. “Let’s get going. I have things to get back to.”

“You know cyberbullying the Riddler doesn’t count as work.”

“I just post comments about his stupidest outfits. It’s not like I run the Facebook page.”

“I do not believe you.”

Rachel snapped her fingers impatiently. “Let’s go, Titans! Burning daylight!”

They finally, grudgingly, started cleaning the apartment, and it took them breaking out the soap and scrubbing brushes to realise just how massive the tower was. They only technically lived in the penthouse, but it was a labyrinth of closets and elaborate architecture that seemed to appeal to the nesting urges of many a spider, mouse and mosquito, not to mention being so sprawling that it actually required an entire team to clean it. After an hour, Rachel was nearly finished tidying up the paraphernalia of their existence from being scattered across the kitchen and fireplace, the decaying food had been tossed into the trash and escorted to the chute downstairs, and the dishes were half done. Gar came out of the bathroom covered in sweat, peeling off rubber gloves and slumping on one of the stools beside the island. After a few minutes of quiet panting, he staggered to his feet and started drying the dishes that were building into a veritable tower beside Rachel’s head. They gamely listened to Jason’s out-of-tune singing from the next room over, grimacing when he broke into the discography of Abba.

“I don’t hear a vacuum.”

“He’s done with that. Started dusting now. Using the spray for wood surfaces and everything.” Rachel laid a ceramic mug in the towel in his hands, wrinkling her nose at the scent of ammonia. “How’s the bathroom?”

“Gross,” said Gar, going through the motions of take, scrub, and set down that had been a ritual after dinner not only in his parents’ house, but the Chief’s manor too. “I never want to do that again. Let it get that bad, I mean.”

“I hear you. You know oatmeal turns into concrete when it’s left for weeks?” She tutted, handing him a plate. “Dick’s right, we should have known better. My mom would be so… so…”

She cleared her throat, chuckling lightly. “My mom back in Illinois, I mean. She was a nurse, a real stickler for cleanliness.” She pursed her lips, seemed to glaze over slightly. “Used to scare me talking about MRSA infections and all sorts. Stupid,” she said, slamming a glass down on the draining board. Gar took it up and inspected it for hairline cracks, keeping her in his periphery.

“It’s not stupid. I mean, we might all have a viral infection, the way we’ve been living. I should know,” he said, jokingly, but Rachel gave him one of her serious faces, scrutinising him as though expecting him to cry, or something.

“Sorry. Now _I’m_ being stupid,” he said. He hip-checked her, keeping his eyes trained on the forks he was attempting to dry. “At least we’re showing up now, right? We can do this living alone thing. And then Dick will be around way more, and we won’t have to.”

Her nascent smile grew into a real one, and her frown smoothed away into laugh lines, and Gar found that doing the dishes was a far better chore than cleaning a toilet in a lot of ways. He remembered telling Rita bad jokes through her bedroom door when she was feeling particularly unwell, and the giddy relief when he would hear even the weakest chuckle. He might not be an acrobat or a brawler, but he had ways to help in fights where there was no singular enemy.

“YEEES, I’VE BEEN BROKEN HEARTED, BLUUUE SINCE THE DAY WE PARTED -,”

“Jason! For the love of -,”

“WHY WHY, DID I EVER LET YOU GO-OO!”

“JASON!”

“What, what?” He leaned into the kitchen from the game room, hanging off the jamb expectantly.

“Have you finished in there yet? My ears are bleeding.”

“Yeah yeah, you love it,” said Jason, holding up a dishcloth. I’m doing the windows. “This shit is hard to clean with, you know.”

“Windolene is like water, it’s the easiest job you could have,” said Rachel, rolling her eyes. “You want to talk difficult, try cleaning five million plates with soap that smells like something they’d use to disinfect a sewer.”

“I’m telling you,” said Jason earnestly. “I’m rubbing it all over the window and it’s just getting harder to see through. Like, I guess it’ll be super clear when it dries or whatever.”

Gar, whose animalistic sense for danger was not completely diluted while human, stared at Jason, then at the sluggishly dripping washcloth in his hand. He stalked past Rachel to peer more closely at the rag that Jason was now holding uncertainly, a questioning look on his face. Gar brushed past him into the game room, twining between the pool table and the jukebox to appraise the nearly floor-length windows, the lower half of which Jason had gotten to. Dread pooled in his stomach like gone-off chicken on the way to his bowels.

“Jason. Where did you get that.”

Jason followed Gar’s gaze to the bottle he was holding. “I don’t know. Some shelf in the closet Dick was talking about. It’s polish, you know, to polish the windows.”

Gar closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. He put the pad of one finger on the window, and pulled it back. Clear, sticky goo trailed his finger, then dribbled back to the glass that was now mostly opaque.

“You used wood polish to clean the windows?” he asked, though it came out as more of a plea. Jason made a face, scratching his head with what would have been apprehension on someone with less attitude. “Yes?”

An agonised yelp and the sound of crashing ceramic and glass sent them running at a full sprint back into the kitchen, where Rachel was standing, surrounded by shards of demolished plates and mugs. She was holding a cup in her hands, and turned it towards them as they skidded to a halt in front of her.

“_Look!_”

They looked, at a blank white mug being gripped by bloodless fingers. Nearly white, Gar realised, as he squinted for a better view. There was a smudge of yellow near the handle, and a few spots of red near the bottom. Rachel seemed to be waiting for their reaction, and all but growled when they exchanged bemused glances.

“It’s gone! Dick’s favourite cup and it’s _ruined_!”

Gar took the cup from her shaking hands, and after some careful analysis recognised it as one of the fixtures of the kitchen - the Superman mug. A mug that was now bone-white and tingled to touch.

“Oh no,” he said. “Oh Rachel. Were you using -,”

“Bleach?” she said shrilly. “Yeah Gar! I sure as hell was!”

Jason couldn’t quite restrain another snort of derision this time. Fully aware that he was asking to get his ass kicked, Gar gave Jason a shove, gesticulating with mounting disbelief.

“Seriously man? _Seriously_? You fucked up a thousands of dollars worth of double glazed, probably missile-resistant glass in there!”

“The bottle was labelled in fucking Spanish or some shit, man!” Jason shouted back. “How was I supposed to know?”

“Is it too much to ask that you act like you’re not some super privileged pet of the Batman? Like pretend you know what soap is, at least -,”

“Fuck you! I’m obviously not the one here who needs to learn how to use soap, and you could have picked up a sponge at any time, green bean -,”

**“STOP IT!”**

The words came from Rachel’s mouth, but they came from all around them too; Gar recoiled as Rachel ascended into the air, black ooze, like ectoplasm, writhing around her head in a macabre halo. Jason swatted at his arm and they both drew back, breathlessly watching as the scree of Rachel’s outburst rose around and with her, trembling as though about to be launched. Art hanging from the walls shook and fell; vases shattered and collapsed; a lamp toppled into the fireplace with a crash and spray of sparks.

“Rachel! Rachel, stop!”

Her eyes, glowing red, blinked, and after a jittery moment in which Gar clutched at Jason and Jason at Gar, Rachel dropped to the floor in a crouch, glass and porcelain shattering around her like a bout of hail.

Jason slunk away from Gar, picking his way over a deadly field of broken glassware to the fridge. He opened it, plucked a beer from the top shelf, and flicked off the cap, starting to drink with urgency.

“S-sorry,” said Rachel quietly, taking in the scene with a solemn understanding of what had just transpired. “I didn’t mean -,”

“To royally fuck up cleaning this place?” said Jason, belching. That makes two of us, funnily enough.”

“Dick is going to murder us,” said Gar. “He is going to murder us all and Batman will be disappointed in him because of the murder thing, and then he’ll hate us even more, for making him murder, and then we’ll feel even more guilty, even though we’ll be dead -,”

“You’re giving me an even bigger headache than that meth lab you guys created in the sink,” complained Jason, throwing Gar his beer bottle. “Here, have a -,”

It sailed past Gar, whose head was in his hands, and smashed into the tiles with a resounding noise that seemed to echo for several minutes. Rachel murmured something about Christ. Jason blanched, but then went to get another beer. Gar’s head suddenly shot up, something perilously close to hope stirring in his belly.

“Okay. Okay. Hear me out.”

Jason and Rachel waited, more exasperated than interested. He held his arms out, as though presenting their destroyed kitchen as a showroom. “We were attacked.”

Rachel’s head tilted to the side. “Excuse me?”

“A villain got in – no, no, a _Villain_ – yeah, a _Villain_ got into the tower and attacked us, leaving this place a mess and wrecking us in general. How is he going to get mad at that? We’d be victims!”

“That’s insane,” said Jason. He pondered it for a few seconds, then rubbed his face and narrowed his eyes at Gar. “But go on.”

“We say we were cleaning, right, and then someone snuck up through the elevator and ambushed us. And took us hostage!”

“He’ll never believe that,” scoffed Jason. “Some regular douchebag got the drop on all three of us? He’d disband us before you could say ‘idiots’.”

Rachel stood up properly, dusting bits of the kitchen off her sweatshirt. “You guys are morons.”

“You think it’s better that he knows we trashed the place?” said Gar, purposely not making eye contact with Rachel on the ‘we’. She hugged herself slightly, turning away from them, but Gar couldn’t find it in himself to feel bad. Rachel had undone the barest amount of improvement they’d made on the place, and now it was down to Gar to fix it, no matter how unorthodox. This type of hare-brained crap had usually worked on Larry and Cliff – who was to say Dick was any different?

“Well I’m not spending whatever time we have left going ape cleaning the whole tower,” said Jason, stretching and setting down the beer bottle. “So let’s put this shit in motion.”

“Get some rope from the gym,” said Gar. “I’m going to erase the camera footage of the past few hours, and shut the surveillance system down so he won’t see us from now on.”

“Smart,” said Jason, legging it down the hall to collect supplies. Rachel laughed, short and mirthless. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

“Just sit tight, okay?” said Gar, checking his watch. They still had a little time before Dick’s deadline. “This is going to work.”

***

“It doesn’t feel like this is going to work,” said Jason, tugging ineffectually at his bindings, which were tied over his head to a towel rack.

“This is fine,” hissed Gar from across the room, where he was attached to an air heater.

“I feel like there was another way we could have gone about this,” said Rachel levelly, her own wrists bound together around the refrigerator handle. They had been waiting for Dick for several minutes when Jason enquired, almost uncertainly: “so who are we saying did this?”

“Crime Man,” Gar said. “Our nemesis. He just loves crime. Oh boy, is he all about that crime.”

“I’m going to kill you myself,” said Jason, just as Rachel started frantically shushing them. The elevator was pinging, a whirring noise getting louder as it moved up the building.

“Oh god, he’s coming.”

“Everyone act like a victim!”

“Oh! I’ve been attacked! Oh won’t anyone save me from this, I don’t mean a retired old man like Old Robin, I mean a good one, like Superman -,”

“Jason, shut _up_ -,”

“Hello?”

Rachel’s spine straightened as though electrified, and she swung around, straining against the rope that Gar had tried to make look like it would actually hold her back. “Kory?”

“Rachel? Where are -,” Kory stepped into view, her mouth falling open in an almost comically large gasp as she absorbed the amount of destruction that had taken place.

“What _happened_ in here?”

“Dastardly crime,” said Jason, and Gar could only regret that he didn’t have something to fire at him. Or the free hands to fire it.

“Are you okay?” she said, hurrying over the broken glass to Rachel and burning away the restraints with a flash of flame.

“Fine, we’re fine,” said Rachel, beaming. Her genuine relief at seeing Kory again bolstered the validity of their story for a while, Gar thought, as she began their rehearsed spiel about a gunman who broke in and held them all hostage. Kory listened intently as Rachel described the gunman’s ferocity, nodding slowly while she freed Jason, then Gar, her lips twisting as Gar joined in with commentary on the man’s three henchmen. It had occurred to Gar that one assailant sounded slightly unbelievable.

“So these men tied you all up and destroyed the penthouse,” said Kory tonelessly, folding her arms and leaning her hip against the counter. “Robin 2.0, a girl that can atomise demons, and a shapeshifter.”

There was a gravid pause. Jason fiddled with the zip on his hoodie, and Rachel seemed to have become enraptured by her socked feet. Gar coughed. “Yeah,” he said.

“So you guys definitely had a party in here or something, right?” Kory picked up a fraction of a decorative plate. “A really intense one.”

“It was a rager,” agreed Jason, over Gar’s groans.

“Kory, please, please don’t tell Dick. We were supposed to clean the apartment up, and instead we had a few – incidents – that left it in an even worse shape. We’ll fix it. But please -,”

“You know, if you’re going to fool Dick Grayson, of all people, you’re going to need to make it look better,” said Kory, stroking her chin contemplatively. The other three gaped.

“I can tie you all back up, but what, is he going to believe that you just sat down for these burglars, or whatever they are?”

“Maybe we should rough Jason up,” said Rachel eagerly. “I mean, Dick knows he’d fight back -,”

“Right, so, screw you guys,” interjected Jason, flipping the bird at Rachel, who merely quirked an eyebrow.

“He’ll believe you if you say it happened, Kory,” wheedled Gar, aware that the sun was sinking fast behind the city skyline. “I’ll tie us up, you say that you just got here, or -,”

“Sure, why not,” she said amiably. “Dick needs to call more often. This should give him a good shock, right?”

Rachel and Gar nodded enthusiastically, while Jason hung back, hunching his shoulders suspiciously. “Guys, I don’t think -,”

“He’s on his way,” said Kory, who was over at the panel by the elevator, tapping into the security feed down on the ground floor. “Better get in position, kids.”

“I’m not a _kid_ -,”

“Come on!” Gar dragged Jason back to the towel rack, and began the process of affixing them all to various pieces of furniture once again. He had barely finished the knot on the rope around his own ankles when the tell-tale swish of the elevator doors announced Dick.

Kory was standing by the kitchen island, twirling a lock of hair between her fingers with a disarmingly neutral expression. Dick stood, dumbstruck initially by her presence, then his attention slid to the state of the room. He eventually caught sight of the three of them, angled awkwardly around the kitchen with their arms stuck behind them. Rachel was still pretending to be distressed, breathing heavily through her nose like someone having a fit; Gar had ploughed ahead right into their story and the finer details of the criminal that had apprehended them; Jason, meanwhile, was wriggling in his bindings, trying to get a piece of glass out of the seat of his trousers.

“What in the _hell_ -,”

“Can’t you see, Detective?” interrupted Kory, indicating the rest of them with a pained look on her face. “They’ve been attacked. By a burglar. Who ruined your lovely tower.”

Dick was turning a vaguely purple colour. “What.”

“Acriminalcameintothetowerandattackedusandtiedusupwe’resosorry,” said Gar desperately, feeling sweat start to bead on his brow under the weight of Dick’s obvious affront. Dick looked at him, then to Jason, then to Rachel, and finally to Kory, whose head was now tipped back against the wall, her smile growing. “Any clues to the perpetrators, Detective?”

“Yeah,” said Dick. “Yeah, I’ve got some leads.” He pointed at all three of them. “All of you. In the danger room bunker. Now.”

“What? But we -,”

“If there’s a criminal out there, they need to be found and punished,” said Dick, untying Jason from the towel rack but leaving his hands bound together. “Come on, all of you up, it’s not safe -,”

Within minutes, they were bundled into the lead-lined concrete bunker that had doubled as a prison for the old Titans, the door slamming shut as the fluorescent lights flickered to life over their heads.

“Kory and I are going out to hunt down this bastard,” Dick called through the grille two-thirds up the door. “Should take a couple of hours. You guys will be safe in here, though. Hope you don’t need to pee.” The grille slid shut with a metallic bang, and Gar was left with a scowling Jason and murderous Rachel, both of them with their hands still tied.

“Right,” said Gar. “Yes. So this could have gone better.” He wobbled slightly. Dick had decided to let him hop to the bunker instead of cutting away the rope binding his feet. “A plus: we’re not cleaning anymore? Eh? Not so bad, right?”

Jason prodded him with the tip of his boot and Gar went down in a heap.

“At least there’s nothing important in here that I can break,” sighed Rachel, sitting cross-legged and starting on the knots in the rope.

“Should’ve just invited the rat to be one of us,” lamented Gar, before Jason made the point of trying to sit on him, and the next few minutes were taken up trying to avoid that by doing the worm.

***

“You’ll let them out eventually right?”

“Oh sure,” said Dick, easily clinking his wine glass into Kory’s before taking a swig. “I can’t even say I’m still mad. I mean, they came up with this as a team, and executed it as one. Sort of impressive.”

Kory leaned back in the chair, observing the ambience of the restaurant Dick had insisted on treating her in. “I was tempted to go along with it, you know. You really haven’t called in a while.”

“Let this evening be proof that my hands were entirely full with those three,” said Dick dryly. “I’m sorry, though. Truly.” He held up a lobster claw. “Please take a photo of me with this. It’s going to drive them nuts.”

Kory rooted in her bag for her phone, taking the picture with more glee than she would ever admit to having. She watched the tension bleed out of Dick as the night wore on, as brusque discussion melted into conversation, and figured she could feel good about this ridiculous day for more than one reason.

**Author's Note:**

> *
> 
> P.S. I actually think Jason loves and respects Alfred pretty much more than anyone else in the world, but a chance to piss off Dick cannot be ignored under ANY circumstances


End file.
